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The Arma developers have confirmed that an external team is working on the Linux version, and that it won’t be native.

For me, I don’t really care what a game uses anymore, as long as it is stable and performs well on reasonable hardware. If it does that, then fab!

For some developers it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of time and money into porting something, when the income gained from it may not come close to their expenses, and we should be okay with that. As I’ve stated before, many times, we are still a tiny platform.

For a game as heavy as Arma 3, it may not even be possible to do it non-native, and they realise this.

The news comes from their latest blog post:
QuoteInsights into our Steam configuration have fueled some speculation that we'd like to clarify here and now. We are indeed experimenting with 2 ports of Arma 3. An external team has been investigating whether it would be possible to create (non-native) client ports to Linux and MacOS. Being external, this does not affect the core development team while it focuses on the Expansion. We should make it really clear that at this stage there are still very many uncertainties. We do not yet know when we'd release these, what their update cycle would be like, or any other specifics. In fact, it's still possible these ports will never see the light of day. There are several technical and licensing challenges to overcome. But, the chances of such ports have gone up from 0% for Arma 3. We'll be sharing more when we can!


How do you feel about this? No word on who it will be, but we have a good idea. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial, FPS, Steam
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PublicNuisance Apr 29, 2015
I don't think I am very likely to buy this anyway as I am more of as single player gamer and it only has a 3 episode campaign for $66 CAD but either way I am glad that the Linux version is being worked on. Hopefully the experience ends up making Bohemia want to get more into bed with Linux later in the future.
aaannz Apr 29, 2015
Well, it took some time but at least BI noticed there is something like Linux. :D
A3 is more more optimized than A2 ever was and I managed to play A2 under wine using OSS radeon, so maybe one day I won't need to reboot each time. Bright future unless I get hit by bus tomorrow. :D
Glog78 Apr 29, 2015
:( sorry i'm here with a big nope :(
None of the eOn ports performance well compared to native windows version. TheWitcher2 while playable still has drop downs below 30fps in some scenes. Bioshock Infinite is instable without workaround (eg: removing all frequency changeing) and is hovering at 60fps and below. While this is certainly playable this is not what my rig is capable of. If i check the cpu usage as a diagram none of my cores is fully used and my gtx 970 can't be the bottleneck @ 1080p.

Bioschock infinite after crashing is even able to hardlock my pc. With rt patch i wasn't able to ps -afx to find the process id. That means that they have putten threads on a nice level where they don't belong and risking the stability of the system.

Sorry while i give kudos for VP getting EON at least in a playable status im not in any way happy with their ports. Neither The Witcher 2 nor Bioschock Infinite. Will i spend money for ARMA 3 or DayZ (based on the same engine) if it is ported by EON? Nope.
Snev Apr 29, 2015
Quoting: nifkerWhat is meant with native in this case? That it is not supported by BI or what?

I'm also a bit confused about the meaning of native in this context. You could interpret as either:
1) not by the core team
2) wrapper

I would like to guess 1 instead of complaining already that it's 2.

Perhaps you can double check with them Liam?
linux_gamer Apr 29, 2015
Quoting: sonicWell, I prefer native version, but I will give it a chance. Maybe if we throw some money at them, they will make Arma 4 native :)
My thoughts on this might be the same: Porting an released title can be non-native if the performance isn't that bad because the publishers will get less earnings due to lower prices and interest. If they make a native -probably more expensive- port they might get discouraged if they loose money and won't release other Linux titles.
Future titles should be native to show comparable or maybe even better performance than Win versions. I hope that Vulkan API and the "final" SteamMachine releases will kick-start Linux gaming later this year.
dimko Apr 29, 2015
Looks like I am not getting it.

I know who is porting it, and 2 games from them failed, one failed utterly.
So no, I shall pass this one out. ALL OTHER native games for me are working fine. I did not buy the this zomby/parkour emulator yet.

So, no...
rea987 Apr 29, 2015
So... I am not into Arma series but as far as I know it is a precision based tactical shooter which should rely on decent framerate. I do not see any reason to be fine with a non-native port in that respect. Yeah, playing a single player action RPG like The Witcher 2 or a single player FPS like BioShock Infinite around 60 FPS while Windows versions are waaay higher than that would be okay. But I cannot accept to play a system demanding competitive multiplayer shooter via wrapper. Sorry. Come on, Real Virtuality engine most probably has no OpenGL renderer; how can someone bear D3D > OpenGL wrapper in a multiplayer game?
Kimyrielle Apr 29, 2015
<wishful thinking>
It would be awesome if in this time and age, developers would develop with cross-platform deployment in mind right from the start. One should think it's ultimately cheaper than porting a platform-dependent game after the fact, either in-house or by outsourcing.
</wishful thinking>

Realistically - as long as the thing runs acceptably I don't care about what makes it run. If I can install and use it just like a native application, I am good. And by that I mean that I really don't want to have to tinker with Wine, ever. I really can't be bothered going through a trial and error procedure every single time I want to get a game to run. But give me something I can toss on my hard drive and have fun with, and I will be a happy panda. :)

Btw., a badly done native port can be just as much a performance killer as any wrapper, so...
MayeulC Apr 29, 2015
Quoting: edoSo an windows unoptimized game will come to linux inside a wrapper than will make it to loose performance, to run on unoptimized graphic drivers on an OS where it was never optimized to run.
Looks interesting.
Well, maybe VP guys could kick in some offline optimizations, too :)
As long as it runs well, with no input lag, I'm fine with it. The price point may be a little too high for me, though.
Valsacar Apr 30, 2015
Quoting: Snev
Quoting: nifkerWhat is meant with native in this case? That it is not supported by BI or what?

I'm also a bit confused about the meaning of native in this context. You could interpret as either:
1) not by the core team
2) wrapper

I would like to guess 1 instead of complaining already that it's 2.

Perhaps you can double check with them Liam?

Native, in this context always means the same thing. It is not a native Linux program, a program written for another OS. Using wine, or some sort of wrapper, to run a Windows program is non-native.
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